Oscars 2025: How To Win Your Couch Pool With The British Odds – Forbes
Mikey Madison at the 97th Annual Academy Awards Nominees Dinner held at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures on February 25, 2025 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Michael Buckner/Penske Media via Getty Images)Known for their Old-Empire, take-no-prisoners market-making—fueled historically by many a long, liquid lunch at the local Dog & Duck—London’s wiliest bookmakers have been hard at the grindstone since the BAFTAs (British Academy of Film And Television Awards, held in mid-February) honing their razor-sharp fractionals to slice through the Oscars competition. Will Conclave actually surprise with Best Picture (again), as it did in London on February 16? Horrifically prescient as it now might seem, the process of selecting a pope was, last year, seen as a really, really long shot for any sort of award, much less a BAFTA Best Picture.So, how’s about that young ingenue in the flick out of Brooklyn’s Russian community, Mikey Madison (Rosberg)? She won the Best Leading Actress BAFTA in London at mid-month. Does she have the moxie, or even a slight whiff of a breath of a chance, to whittle down America’s own hotly touted Demi Moore for Best Actress in the very seat of American cinema?To the business, then, the bugles are sounding, the horses are being called once more to the track. In London this morning, February 28, 2025, the answer to both those questions in the British betting hivemind is a resounding NO—in fact, London will be having exactly none of those eccentric British manners, or propriety, or scathing satire when it comes to money on the barrelhead, mate! No one can afford any of that tripe, these days!On Bet365’s bellweather tote, the charming and hilarious Mikey Madison is sitting at a very finely sliced 15/8 to win, while the formidable Ms. Moore, who is undergoing somewhat of a deep career renascence, rocks along with a Secretariat-like lead way lower than 1/1, at a bracing 2/5, putting her in first place in British estimation. Said another way, Demi Moore’s performance in The Substance is rated by the British as having a 71.4% chance of success, as they judge this Academy. There is no beating the narrative of a beautiful lady getting enticed into a Faustian bargain by the notion of… well, eternity, including that of her beauty. Rounding out the category, the beautifully nuanced performance by Brazilian actress Fernanda Torres books in I’m Still Here stands as the third-favorite at 12/1; and in various bookmakers’ hands, Cynthia (Wicked) Erivo and Karla Sofia Gascon (Emilia Perez) are holding their own at the low-probability end of the tote at 33/1 and 65/1, respectively.LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – FEBRUARY 25: Adrien Brody attends the 97th Annual Oscars Nominees Dinner at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures on February 25, 2025 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Emma McIntyre/WireImage)Yes, it was all masterful and even maybe a little bit cute that the current dater-of-Kylie-Jenner — sorry, the talented French/American actor Timothée Chalamet, simultaneously of Dune, Part II — dove deep over the course of five years to learn how to sing like Dylan for his turn as the young Greenwich-Village troubadour, but…the deadeye bookmakers of London are having none of that, either. The British bookies’ position is: Nothing is cute anymore in this America, least of all some woolly-headed folksinger living some kind of “protest” life in the 1960s. Which is why Monsieur Timothée Chalamet has been stuck in his traces in the second-favorite slot at 2/1 at Bet365, with a 33.33% implied probability of success. The more mature, versatile Adrien Brody, playing a heady “immigrant” (get it?) architect trying to find his way forward in The Brutalist, is logged in as top favorite at an incredibly low 4/11, leagues down from 1/1. That means Brody bears a stratospheric implied probability of success of 73.4% to win Best Actor, according to the Brits. Period.Put another way, as this new U.S. administration settles down to the wall-building and troop-deploying business on its borders, a man playing an immigrant architect attempting to find his way in the States is considered by the British bookies to have more than twice the chance of Chalamet at the Best Actor statue out in Hollywood this weekend. Hollywood being a town whose signal industry, like many others in our country, was built by immigrants, including British immigrants, it should be pointed out. Call it kismet.The category is nonetheless competitive, odds-wise, down in the bottom tier. Ralph Fiennes (Conclave), fresh off his BAFTA win, is third-favorite at 14/1, while Sebastian Stan and Colman Domingo duke it out at 33/1 on Bet365, with Stan arguably maintaining a slight edge over Domingo as the latter garnered a high of 80/1 at FanDuel, of all places.US filmmaker Sean Baker arrives for the 97th Annual Academy Awards Nominees Dinner at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles, February 25, 2025. (Photo by VALERIE MACON / AFP) (Photo by VALERIE MACON/AFP via Getty Images)Sean Baker’s deeply comic Anora started coming on strong at the Golden Globes, and stayed more or less out in front of the pack on its own lovable indie power, thank you. It is a splendid story, about displacement, about cultures, and not least about that huge, topsy-turvy, hilariously transplanted suburb of Moscow that is southern Brooklyn. All of that is why it has tapped below the 1/1 bar among the London bookies and achieved odds of 4/9, for an implied probability to win of 69.2%. Baker is followed by Brady Corbet, at 13/8; Jacques Audiard, at 20/1; Coralie Fargeat, at 25/1; and James Mangold, at 25/1.The producer/director/cast/crew/everything award is most coveted, of course, and classically most difficult to handicap. It’s sometimes argued that the Oscar “campaigns” — such as they are — begin in May at Cannes, and this year, that seems about right, as three of the ten films up for Best Picture premiered there (Anora, The Substance, and Emilia Perez). Of that latter film, although actress Karla Sofía Gascón rather spectacularly incinerated her own chances at a statuette a few weeks back, it’s unclear what effect that might or might not have had on the production’s chances at anything in this contest or other tech/crew gong.The Brits say: Doesn’t matter what crazy stuff Gascon spouted and apologized for, and they seat Emilia Perez firmly at 66/1, in fifth place of the ten films in contention. By contrast, Sean Baker’s Anora is the rocket atop the tote, sporting 4/9 odds at Bet365, with an bracing implied probability of success of 69.2%. In descending order of probability to win, then, Anora is followed by Conclave, at 5/2; The Brutalist, at 13/2; and A Complete Unknown, at 50/1. At No. 5, Emilia Perez represents the deep fault line between the upper and lower halves of the class, below which the really high odds get assigned. At No. 6 in London is Dune, Part Two, at 100/1, a huge jump down from Emilia Perez. I’m Still Here is seventh in London’s estimation, also at 100/1, and below that lies The Substance, Wicked, and The Nickel Boys, which, despite its great storytelling, mysteriously manages to rope in odds of 150/1. This can well be an example of divergence, in other words, an Oscar point at which it’s wise to take the British bookmakers with a grain or two of salt. In plain English: One has the sense they can have missed the deep American significance of a story like that of The Nickel Boys. Said another way, win, lose or draw in the Academy’s eyes, The Nickel Boys, the Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel and the film, have legs.So, a bracing proposition: Whether you’re a resident of Britain and you’ve one of those new £100 notes to blow or an American with a hankering to bet against that same tide at a Vegas sportsbook, and if the admittedly remote possibility of the Academy taking a swift turn from the usual suspects to award the film about the boys who endured the abusive 1960s Florida reform school somehow comes to be, you can do something nicely philanthropic, and to The Nickel Boys’ exact societal point, with the sort of price that those 100/1 to 150/1 odds will bring.
